Summer in Hannover – IV: God’s own Border

Click here for “Summer in Hannover – III: Lovely German Girl”

Dear friends, do you really want me to continue the ‘Summer in Hannover’ series?. If you are not interested we can stop this and write something interesting for you. OK, I will cut many things and try to finish up this series in the next post.

The bus is moving through the busiest motorway of France, Autoroute-A1. I am very happy because the route is new and has some importance, furthermore I got a nice friend. After some time, the Bus left Autoroute-A1 to enter Autoroute-A2. Yes we are following the conceptual ‘European route’-E19. There is nothing except light forest on both sides of the road. You can see SOS posts frequently and the information boards to show ‘Next Telephone Post’ after 20 KM, Restaurent 45 KM away, etc.

The people in the bus brought my memory back to the general compartment of Indian railway. If I have no luggage, I prefer only general compartment because you can see there the real India. I will write about Indian railway later on. Here also the people are very frank and friendly. Not like the one we are finding in flights or TGVs.

I found some people going down and coming back after sometime. I was curious to know where they are going and I asked my friend about this. Her answer was very simple and helpful for me, there is toilet in the first level of the bus they might be going there. I thanked Eurolines for providing such a facility in bus that I never expect.

We reached Belgium boarder by around 22.00 Hrs. The picture of an international boarder in my mind as an Indian was totally different from the Schengen Border. I surprised to see the border. You can see nothing special except a board to let you know you are entering another country.

I read “Belgique” (French form of ‘Belgium’) inside a circle of 12+ stars. The boards you see when you enter Calicut corporation area is far bigger than the information board at France-Belgium border. The same case is at Belgium-Netherlands, and The Netherlands-Germany boarder also. Even to cross Kerala – Karnataka/Tamilnadu border you have to face some check post. This made tiger to call this borders as God’s own borders.

Unfortunately the photo I took was not clear because of rain, however I will give a photo of a Schengan border that I got from internet to give an idea about such borders.

We are in Belgium now. At the border we left French Autoroute-A2 and entered Belgian Autoroute-A7, that too the part of European route-E19. I felt the Belgium government is spending more than France for the maintenance of motorways. Even though the quality of the roads are same, I think they spend much money to make the road more beautiful. The bus stopped for fueling and the driver said it will stop there for half an hour. We, myself and our German friend had a burger and some cool drinks at the Café near to fuel station.

I got impressed on mutual understanding of Europeans in that trip. When my friend got headache, without any hesitation or fear she accepted the Paracetamol tablet I gave to her. I really surprised because, in India no one will be ready to accept something from the fellow passengers. Even our government use to warn us not to accept anything from your fellow passengers.

Even though the bus went to Germany from Belgium through Netherlands, we’ll jump directly to Germany from Belgium to reduce the length of this post.

It’s morning 6 AM, we are in Hannover now, I felt very sad as I have to leave the lovely friend I found in the Bus, she has to get down at Berlin. Let’s dedicate the tigersamachar series “Summer in Hannover” for this cute friend.

Now the real problem starts. I don’t know German language and the only address Rejish (Kuttai) gave is “Dieckmanstraße 5, Hannover”. He could not come to receive me because we don’t know where exactly the bus will stop. Some how I managed to reach their house taking one hour. Kuttai and Ajith were there to welcome me.

First of all I had a shower and then had tea made by Kuttai. I wondered seeing the cup they used to have tea. One such cup is equivalent to 5 ordinary cups!! As I like tea very much I too had a full tea like them. There was bread and chicken curry as the breakfast (this chicken curry was a special one, because it was prepared by Mamu, who is living in Netherlands, He was there the day before and I got the chance to have his chicken curry, truly saying it is not tasty compared to the one that Kuttai made).

The main thing I noticed in their house is a weighing machine. That is equally useful for both of them, for Kuttai it is to reduce his weight and for Ajit to improve his weight. It does weight management through motivation and warning.

I will complete the series Summer in Hannover in the next post and probably I will write it in Hannover itself. Next post will cover the visit to Kuttai’s university, special type of people called Naturists (Nudists), we found in the park and finally the return of the tiger.